The operation of these principles may be modified to any extent by

the influence of others: but they exist; they are fully ascertained;

and must henceforth serve as guides to all wise attempts to rectify

an unjust distribution of the wealth of society. It is difficult to

conceive how any sound mind can have withheld its assent to these

grand principles, after they had once been clearly announced. It is

very evident that some soils possess a far inferior power of

producing food to others; and that, in the natural course of things,

society will till the best soils first, and then the next best, and

then soils of the third degree, and so on, as the demand for food

increases; and that, as each adopted soil will yield less than the

last, every application of capital will yield a smaller return—all

applications of capital being regulated by the primary application

of capital to land. It is difficult to see how this general

principle can be disputed, however large may be the allowance

required for the influence of other principles. Improvements in

tillage, yet undreamed of, may increase the produce incalculably;

but this increased produce will still be subjected to the same law.

There will be an inequality of improved as of unimproved soils. New

powers, chemical and mechanical, may be brought to bear on the soil

for ever and ever; and still the same law must hold good while there

is an original inequality in the material on which those powers are

employed. Whether we obtain our food from the sea, or from new

regions of the earth,—if we could fetch it down from the moon, or up

from the centre of the globe,—the principle must hold good as long

as there are limited and varying facilities for obtaining this food,

and an increasing demand for it. More labour and more would be given

to answer each new demand; and the return would still be less, till

it came to a vanishing point.

If this labour were that of stocks and stones in the service of a

reasonable number of men, the simple fact would be that this

reasonable number of men must live upon the produce of the labour

already set in motion. But the labour in question is human labour,

which eats in proportion as it works, and multiplies itself faster

by far than it can augment its supply of food. The proprietor of a

field feeds his five children from it, till they each have five

children, and each of these five children in their turn. Does the

produce of the paternal field augment itself five times, and then

twenty-five times, to suit the growing wants of the new generations?

It may possibly be made to yield double, and then three times, and

then four times what it once did; but no kind or degree of skill can

make the ratio of its productiveness the same as that of human

increase. What primary rule of practice follows from the combination

of these two principles?

--------------

The increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of

subsistence.

Since successive portions of capital yield a less and less return,

and the human species produce at a constantly accelerated rate,

there is a perpetual tendency in population to press upon the means

of subsistence.

The ultimate checks by which population is kept down to the level of

the means of subsistence, are vice and misery.

Since the ends of life are virtue and happiness, these checks ought

to be superseded by the milder methods which exist within man’s

reach.

These evils may be delayed by promoting the increase of capital, and

superseded by restraining the increase of population.

Towards the one object, a part of society may do a little; towards

the other, all may do much.

By rendering property secure, expenditure frugal, and production

easy, society may promote the growth of capital.

By bringing no more children into the world than there is a

subsistence provided for, society may preserve itself from the

miseries of want. In other words, the timely use of the mild

preventive check may avert the horrors of any positive check.

The preventive check becomes more, and the positive checks less

powerful, as society advances.

The positive checks, having performed their office in stimulating

the human faculties, and originating social institutions, must be

wholly superseded by the preventive check before society can attain

its ultimate aim,—the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

--------------

However the wealth of society may be distributed,—whether among the

three classes who, at present, in all civilized countries, divide

it, or among the partakers of a common stock, (according to the

desire of some who mourn our evils, and look, as others think, in a

wrong place for the remedy),—however the wealth of society may be

distributed, the above principles are of the highest concern to the

whole of society. Some may feel sooner than others the pressure of

population against the means of subsistence; but it ultimately

concerns all, to the last degree, that there should be subsistence

for the race. This consideration is prior to all others which relate

only to the modes and degrees in which wealth shall be shared by

various classes. There is little wisdom in fixing a scale of

enjoyments while society is laid open to vice, disease, and death,—

the awful retribution for a careless administration of the common

possession.—Yet the policy of rulers,—of rulers by office and by

influence,—has, till very lately, been to stimulate population

without any regard to the subsistence provided for it. The plea has

always been that every man born into the world brings with him the

labour which will support more than himself: but each must also

bring with him the land on which his labour is to be employed, or he

may find it no more possible to live upon labour than to live upon

air. There is never any fear that population will not increase fast

enough, as its increase is absolutely determined by the existing

means for its support. But there is a perpetual danger that it may

increase too fast for the purposes of the ruler; and, for what has

but too seldom entered into his purposes,—the happiness of his

people. If he looks to the narratives of wars, he may find that the

subsistence of armies has always failed sooner than men, though its

armed force can never compose more than a small portion of any

nation. He will find in the history of every state that when the

over-pressure of the people upon its food, partially and most

painfully kept down by the death of its infants and its aged, and of

those who have grown sickly through want, has been yet more

fearfully relieved by the agency of famine and pestilence, a new

impulse is invariably given, far more efficacious than the bidding

of any sovereign. It is folly, he may thus see, to lash the dull

tide of a swollen river when banked up so that it cannot flow; and

when a portion of its waters are drawn off, the stream runs fast

enough of itself. If the power of a ruler were to be estimated by

the rate at which he could induce the increase of his subjects,

which would be the most powerful,—the Emperor of China or the King

of Hayti? The Haytian empire is insignificant enough in comparison

of the Chinese; but the Haytian king sees his subjects multiplying,

amidst their superabundance of food, at a rate hitherto unsurpassed;

while the Chinese can multiply no more till they can enlarge the

extent of their food. Under the stimulus of royal promises, children

may be born; but by the command of a higher authority, they die. The

laws of nature are too strong for kings. In this case, the bidding

is either needless or unavailing.

Any power of stimulus which rulers possess should be otherwise

applied,—to the production of subsistence. If the plain rule were

followed, of making increased subsistence _precede_ an increase of

population, the great work of the distribution of wealth would

follow its own natural laws; and men would only have to participate

and be content. When the final cause of the arrangement by which

population has been ordained to press against the means of

subsistence shall have wrought its work in stimulating the human

faculties, and opening up new resources to the race, there will be

as ample an enjoyment of the blessings of life as the warmest

advocate of numbers can desire,—an enjoyment infinitely greater for

the absence of all deadly struggle or pining desire for a due share

of the bounties of nature’s mighty feast.

At present, however, while we have the pride of luxury within our

palaces, and famine at their gates, it is necessary to ascertain how

the two principles announced above affect the distribution of the

wealth of society.

The uncontrolled operation of these principles will be found the

main cause of the tremendous inequality of possession in society;

and if society wishes to put an end to such inequality, it must be

done by suiting the proceedings of society to these principles, and

not by any temporary measures. If the possessions of the richest of

our peers were to-morrow to be divided among the poorest of our

operatives and country labourers, no permanent relief to the latter

class would be obtained by beggaring the former, and the same

principles would go on working, the day after, to produce in time

precisely similar results. Even if it were the practice with us, as

it was with the Jews, that land should revert to the original

possessors, at certain fixed periods, the same laws would work; and

to even greater disadvantage than now, as the land-owners would not

be so rich, while the labourers would be quite as poor. Property

would run less into masses; but there would be less wealth to be

amassed. There is no use in opposition to these principles, or in

discontent at their natural results. The true wisdom is in modifying

the results by practically recognizing the principle. We must

control the rise of rent by stimulating agricultural improvements,

and preventing the demand for food from outstripping them. We must

moderate the pressure upon the subsistence, or wages fund, by

regulating the numbers who are to share it. We must moderate the

pressure against the profits fund, by keeping the demands upon the

wages fund within due bounds.[C]

-----

Footnote C:

It is well known that there are persons in this country, as in

France and elsewhere, who hold the opinion that the evils of

unequal distribution would be annihilated by annihilating the

distinctions of rent, profits, and wages; making the whole society

the sole landowner and capitalist, and all its members labourers.

It is impossible to doubt the benevolent intentions of the leading

preachers of this doctrine, whose exertions have originated in

sympathy with the most-suffering portion of the community; but it

is equally impossible to their opponents to allow that any

arbitrary arrangements of existing resources can exclude want,

while the primary laws of proportion are left uncontrolled. When

the advocates of a common stock can show that their system

augments capital and regulates population more effectually than

the system under which individual property is held, their

pretensions will be regarded with more favour than they have

hitherto engaged. At present, it is pretty evident that in no way

is capital so little likely to be taken care of as when it belongs

to every body,—_i.e._ to nobody; and that, but for the barriers of

individual rights of property, the tide of population would flow

in with an overwhelming force. There may be an age to come when

the institution of property shall cease with the occasions for it;

but such an age is barely within our ken. Meantime, our pauper

system exhibits the consequences of a promise of maintenance

without a restriction of numbers by the state. If it were possible

now to establish common-stock institutions which should include

the entire community, they would soon become so many workhouses,

or pauper barracks. If any one doubts this, let him ask himself

how capital is to be husbanded and cherished when it is nobody’s

interest to take care of it, and how population is to be regulated

when even the present insufficient restraints are taken away. If

education is to supply the deficiency of other stimuli and

restraints, let us have education in addition. We want it enough

as an addition before we can think of trying it as a substitution.

We must see our fathers of families exemplary in providing for

their own offspring before they can be trusted to labour and deny

themselves from an abstract sense of duty. As for the main

principle of the objections to the abolition of proprietorship, it

is contained in the following portion of one of my summaries of

principles:—

It is supposed by some that these tendencies to the fall of wages

and profits may be counteracted by abolishing the distinctions of

shares, and casting the whole produce of land, capital, and

labour, into a common stock. But this is a fallacy.

For, whatever may be the saving effected by an extensive

partnership, such partnership does not affect the natural laws by

which population increases faster than capital. The diminution of

the returns to capital must occasion poverty to a multiplying

society, whether those returns are appropriated by individuals

under the competitive system, or equally distributed among the

members of a co-operative community.

The same checks to the deterioration of the resources of society

are necessary under each system.

These are, (in addition to the agricultural improvements

continually taking place,)—

1. The due limitation of the number of consumers.

2. The lightening of the public burdens, which at present

abstract a large proportion of profits and wages.

3. A liberal commercial system which shall obviate the necessity

of bringing poor soils into cultivation.

-----

The wealth of society naturally distributes itself between two

classes of capitalists, from one of which a portion descends to a

third class,—the labourers. The two classes of capitalists are,

first, the owners of land or water,—of the natural agents of

production,—and next, the farmers of land or water, or those who

employ, by the application of capital, the natural agents of

production. Each of the three classes obtains his share by

purchase,—original, or perpetually renewed—the landowner by the

secondary or hoarded labour of his ancestors or of his youth; the

capitalist by hoarded labour, and the purchased labour of his

servants; and the labourer by primary labour. The landowner receives

his share as rent; the capitalist as profits; the labourer as wages.

Real RENT is that which is paid to the landowner for the use of the

original, indestructible powers of the soil. The total rent paid by

a farmer includes also the profits of the capital laid out by the

landowner upon the estate.

Land possesses its original, indestructible powers in different

degrees.

The most fertile being all appropriated, and more produce wanted,

the next best soil is brought into cultivation; then land of the

third degree, and so on, till all is tilled that will repay tillage.

An unequal produce being yielded by these different lands, the

surplus return of all above the lowest goes to the landowner in the

form of rent.

The same thing happens when repeated applications of capital are

made to the same land for the sake of increasing its productiveness.

The produce which remains over the return to the least productive

application of capital goes to the landowner in the form of rent.

RENT, therefore, consists of that part of the return made to the

more productive portions of capital, by which it exceeds the return

made to the least productive portion.

New lands are not tilled, and capital is not employed for a less

return, unless the produce will pay the cost of production.

A rise of prices, therefore, creates, and is not created by, rent.

When more capital is employed in agriculture, new land is tilled, a

further outlay is made on land already tilled; and thus also rent

arises from increase of capital.

When capital is withdrawn from agriculture, inferior, _i. e._ the

most expensive soils, are let out of cultivation; and thus rent

falls.

A rise of rent is, therefore, a symptom, and not a cause, of wealth.

The tendency of rent is, therefore, to rise for ever in an improving

country. But there are counteracting causes.

Art increases production beyond the usual returns to capital laid

out: prices fall in proportion to the abundance of the supply, and

rent declines.

Improved facilities for bringing produce to market, by increasing

the supply, cause prices to fall and rent to decline.

COMMODITIES, being produced by capital and labour, are the joint

property of the capitalist and labourer.

The capitalist pays in advance to the labourers their share of the

commodity, and thus becomes its sole owner.

The portion thus paid is WAGES.

REAL WAGES are the articles of use and consumption that the labourer

receives in return for his labour.

NOMINAL WAGES are the portion he receives of these things reckoned

in money.

The fund from which wages are paid in any country consists of the

articles required for the use and consumption of labourers which

that country contains.

THE PROPORTION OF THIS FUND RECEIVED BY INDIVIDUALS MUST MAINLY

DEPEND ON THE NUMBER AMONG WHOM THE FUND IS DIVIDED.

The rate of wages in any country depends, therefore, not on the

wealth which that country contains, but on the proportion between

its capital and its population.

As population has a tendency to increase faster than capital, wages

can be prevented from falling to the lowest point only by adjusting

the proportion of population to capital.

The lowest point to which wages can be permanently reduced, is that

which affords a bare subsistence to the labourer.

The highest point to which wages can be permanently raised is that

which leaves to the capitalist just profit enough to make it worth

his while to invest capital.

The variations of the rate of wages between these extreme points

depending mainly on the supply of labour offered to the capitalist,

the rate of wages is mainly determined by the sellers, not the

buyers of labour.

The produce of labour and capital, after rent has been paid, is

divided between the labourer and the capitalist, under the name of

wages and profits.

Where there are two shares, each determines the other, provided they

press equally upon one another.

The increase of the supply of labour, claiming reward, makes the

pressure in the present case unequal, and renders wages the

regulator of profits.

The restriction of the supply of food causes the fall of both

profits and wages.

The increased expense of raising food enhances its price: labour,

both agricultural and manufacturing, becomes dearer (without

advantage to the labourer): this rise of wages causes profits to

fall; and this fall brings after it a reduction of the labourer’s

share, or a fall of wages.

The fall of profits and wages is thus referable to the same cause

which raises rent;—to an inequality in the fertility of soils.

--------------

Thus it appears that, owing to the inequality of soils, and the

principle of increase in the number of consumers, the natural

tendency of rent is to rise; and to rise in proportion to the

increase in the number of consumers. The tendency of profits is to

fall as rent rises, _i. e._ as the production of food becomes more

expensive. The fall of profits brings after it, as a necessary

consequence, the fall of wages; and the individual shares of wages

are still further reduced by every increase of the numbers among

whom the wages’ fund is to be divided.

These are important truths, and by no means discouraging, if we know

how to make use of them. There is no need hastily to suppose that

our landowners must inevitably get all the wealth of society into

their own hands, so that there will in time be only two classes in

the state,—landowners and paupers. It is possible that this might

happen, as it is possible that we may all die of famine from nobody

choosing to be at the trouble of tilling the ground. The two cases

are possible, and the catastrophes about equally probable. No one

can deny the strong tendency to famine to which we are all liable

unless we exert ourselves to avoid it; and the undue rise of rent,

and fall of profits and wages, is quite as certainly avoided by

moderate caution—by bringing natural laws to bear upon each other,

and not (as some desire) a law of human will to control that which

is beyond the reach of the unassisted human will.

Some who toil and earn but little recompense cry out upon the wealth

of the landowners, and desire a law which shall forbid their

receiving more than so much for a certain quantity and quality of

land. A law that men should not die in a famine would be as much to

the purpose. The way to prevent men dying of hunger is to sow grain

for them; and the way to prevent the landlords growing unduly rich

is to provide more food;—whether by improving the methods of tillage

at home, or inventing and improving productions of other kinds which

may exchange for food from abroad. Another way is by making

machinery (which does not eat and drink) supersede human labour, so

that we may have the increased production without the accompanying

consumption; but the most certain method of all, and that which is

in the power of all, is to proportion the number of consumers to the

existing supply of food. As soon as this is done, rents will be

stationary, and will be certain to fall after the next improvement

in tillage or manufacture. Meantime, the landowner can no more help

the rise of his rents than the poorest operative in the next town;

and, in fact, not so much, if that operative is bringing up a large

family to depreciate the value of labour, and increase the excessive

pressure upon food. The landlord, meantime, declares truly that he

is growing no richer. He is told that his rents have risen since

such a time; but (from various causes) his tenants cannot pay the

whole; and he is besides burdened with the maintenance of the

indigent who have been pauperized by the undue depression of wages.

No one would be more glad than he, to have his rents nominally

lowered so that he might receive the whole, and do what he pleased

with it. No one would be more glad than he, if he be wise, at the

tidings of fresh discoveries in science or inventions in art, or of

new resources opened beyond sea, or of increased providence in the

habits of the poorer classes, which should cause his income to fall

with the price of food, but render his lessened income more secure.

--------------

It is of even greater consequence to ascertain the relative position

of the other two parties, since any quarrel about their respective

shares cannot but cause a diminution of that which is to be divided

between them. Each party being dependent upon the other, any

interruption of their harmony cannot but be injurious to both: but

dissension is especially disastrous where, as in the present case,

the dependence is unequal. The capitalists have the great advantage

over the labourers of being able to wait longer for the adjustment

of disputes which may arise between them. Deplorable as are the

consequences to individuals and to society of living upon capital

from the absence of revenue, the case of those who are driven to

live upon their capital is, at least, better than that of the party

which has no capital to live upon.

The consequence of this inequality of dependence is that power of a

different kind is more frequently put in action by the more

dependent than by the less dependent party. The power of combination

to obtain a larger share of the subsistence fund is in the hands of

both parties, and is occasionally used by both; but much more

frequently by the labourers than by the capitalists. For this there

are obvious reasons.

If the proportion of labour to capital be equal, there is little

inducement to either party to quarrel with the other, as their

shares of gain are balanced: but if any capitalists choose to press

upon the labourers, it is to their own ultimate disadvantage, as

well as that of the labourers; for there can never be a combination

so extensive as to include all capitalists; and those who are not

included will find it their interest to lower the prices of their

commodities, paying the same wages as the united capitalists, and

being content with the ordinary rate of profit. By means of this

underselling, the extraordinary rate of profit is necessarily

brought down, and the capitalists are just as they were at first,

the reduction having fallen upon the wages of the labourer. Matters

can seldom, however, proceed so far as to the infliction of this

gratuitous injury. If the proportion of labour to capital be equal,

a very short resistance of the labourers to the reduction of their

wages suffices to make the capitalists repent of their endeavours to

grasp more than their share: and such endeavours are consequently

extremely rare where capital and labour are duly proportioned.

If there be a superabundance of capital, the capitalists are in no

condition to gain any thing by combination. To pay high wages

answers better to them than to live upon their capital. In such a

case, therefore, the capitalists never combine.—Or rather,—and I say

it with sorrow,—if such a case should arise, they would not combine.

Such cases can scarcely be spoken of in this country as matters of

actual experience, since there are but too few instances of capital

being abundant in proportion to labour.

On the third supposition,—that labour abounds in proportion to

capital,—there is no need for the capitalists to use their power of

combination. They can obtain what they want without it. The

labourers are the weaker party, inasmuch as they must have food, and

depend on the capitalists for it:—not for the quantity;—that depends

on themselves,—on the numbers they bring to divide a certain

quantity;—and the capitalists can resist their claims no further

than to secure the rate of profit, without which no capitalist would

do business. Not for the quantity of food to each man do the

labourers depend on the capitalists; but for the purchase of their

labour at all; and therefore, the capitalists do not need to combine

when labour superabounds.

For the same reasons, the labourers do not need to combine when

capital superabounds. They can naturally obtain as large a share of

the subsistence fund as will leave ordinary profits to the

capitalist: and this happens of course, as is well known from the

examples of newly settled countries, and newly invented

manufactures, where the profits of the capitalist are invariably

prevented by the dearness of labour from much exceeding the ordinary

rate.

In cases of equal proportion, the labourers run even a greater risk

from a strike than the capitalists. Some of the capitalists will, if

the balance be exact, withdraw their capital from business rather

than stand a strike; and thus is caused an immediate superabundance

of labour, with all its disadvantages to the labourers. But if no

capitalist withdraws, the waste of capital necessarily caused by a

strike causes also a superabundance of labour; and thus also the

labourers suffer for having destroyed the balance.

But when combination is resorted to in the absence of all other

power, its results are the most disastrous to the weak party which

employs it. The labourers who superabound are already at a

disadvantage, which can only be increased by any resistance which

helps to impoverish the capitalists. They may injure the capitalists

by impairing the capitalists’ share of the subsistence fund: but

they injure themselves much more by impairing, at the same time, the

labourers’ share. That such means of injuring capitalists are ever

resorted to in such a condition of affairs proves most forcibly that

the largest of the parties concerned is not yet fully aware how the

case stands, and that a far greater power of competition with the

capitalists is lodged with them than that which they are too ready

to employ to the injury of both parties and the good of neither.

If it had been, indeed, true that, by any natural laws of

distribution, any class of society could be placed in a position of

necessary and permanent inferiority of rights to any other class,

all writers on the philosophy of society would have shrunk from

relating any fables which must convey so sad a moral. But there is a

very cheering moral involved in every melancholy story that we hear

of the contentions of masters and men, and of the sufferings which

thence arise. The fact is that, so far from the masters having any

natural power,—even if they had the wish,—to oppress the working

classes, the working classes hold a power which may make them the

equals in independence of any class in society. That they have not

yet used it is less their fault than their misfortune. Whether fault

or misfortune, it is destined to be remedied, if we may trust to

experience working its invariable work, and communicating that

wisdom and power which can by no other means be gained. The only

control over the price of labour resides with those who can control

its quantity. Overstock the market with labour, and the most

compassionate of capitalists can do nothing to prevent its being ill

rewarded. Understock the market with labour, and the veriest miser

that ever employed gold for profit cannot prevent labour fetching a

high price. And with whom does it rest to overstock or understock

the market with labour? With whom does it rest to determine whether

the subsistence fund which exists shall be divided among a moderate

number or among a scrambling multitude? Most assuredly not with the

capitalists but the labourers.

When the labouring class fully comprehends the extent of the power

which it holds,—a power of obtaining not only its own terms from the

capitalists, but all the necessaries and comforts of life, and with

them the ease and dignity which become free-born men, they will turn

their other power of combination to better purposes than those of

annoyance and injury. The common plea of those labourers who already

understand their own case is that there is little use in scattered

individuals being careful to proportion their families to their

means of subsistence, while the greater number multiply

thoughtlessly, and prepare for new encroachments on the subsistence

fund. The same plea has been in use for ever on the first proposal

of any great social amelioration; and it has ever been found that

amelioration has followed with unexpected speed upon the virtuous

efforts of scattered individuals. They work round to each other,

they combine, they bring others into the combination, and these

again bring more, till there are hundreds of followers for every

leader, and for every follower there is a foe the less. Why should

it not be so with this greatest of all ameliorations that has ever

been proposed? If the working classes can still combine for objects

which have been a thousand times proved unattainable or hurtful when

attained, why should they not combine for purposes of providence and

mutual support in a better system of economy? Such combinations have

already begun; for every society which has for its objects the

economy of the resources of the working people, and the

encouragement of provident habits, is a society for limiting the

population within the means of subsistence. Many such associations

are so well founded as to give assurance that they will be

persevered in; if persevered in, it cannot be very long before some

one class or band of labourers feels the benefits of prudence, and

exhibits the truth that moderate self-denial in one direction brings

means of rational indulgence in others: and when this happens, the

work of amelioration will be fairly begun. The working men’s day

will be at hand, and no one will hail it more joyfully than the

capitalists;—for willingly would they exchange such power as is

given them by the helplessness of their labourers, for security

against the waste of capital which is caused by the opposition of

their work-people and the pauperism of their dependents.

--------------

Combinations of labourers against capitalists (whatever other

effects they may have) cannot secure a permanent rise of wages

unless the supply of labour falls short of the demand;—in which

case, strikes are usually unnecessary.

Nothing can permanently affect the rate of wages which does not

affect the proportion of population to capital.

Legislative interference does not affect this proportion, and is

therefore useless.

Strikes affect it only by wasting capital, and are therefore worse

than useless.

Combinations may avail or not, according to the reasonableness of

their objects.

Whether reasonable or not, combinations are not subjects for

legislative interference; the law having no cognizance of their

causes.

Disturbance of the peace being otherwise provided against,

combinations are wisely therefore now left unregarded by the law.

The condition of labourers may be best improved,—

1. By inventions and discoveries which create capital; and by

husbanding instead of wasting capital;—for instance, by

making savings instead of supporting strikes.

2. BY ADJUSTING THE PROPORTION OF POPULATION TO CAPITAL.

--------------

This is not the place in which to show how tremendous is the waste

of capital in a turn-out; nor have I been able to do it in that one

of my fables which treats of combinations of workmen. I felt myself

bound to present the fairest instance, in order to show the badness

of the principle of a strike in the best case; but I have the means

of showing, if I had but the space, that the members of a

combination are often—are commonly—the victims of a far more

despotic tyranny than they themselves ascribe to the masters, and a

more ruinous spoliation than the discontented suppose the rich

desirous to inflict upon the poor. I trust and believe that there

are many William Allens among the class of operatives; but I also

believe that few of these are leaders of strikes. Allen was an

unwilling leader of a strike; and there are many who see even more

clearly than he did the hopelessness and mischievousness of the

contest, who have either more selfishness to keep them out of it, or

more nerve to make a protest against a bad principle, and a stand

against a bad practice. I believe that the most intelligent and the

best men among the working-classes now decline joining a turn-out;

and it is very certain that not only the most ignorant, but the

worst, are among the first to engage. The reasons for this will be

sufficiently obvious to those who consider what facilities these

associations afford for such practices as ignorant and bad men

like,—for meddling and governing, for rioting, for idling, and

tippling, and journeying, and speechifying at other people’s

expense. No better occasion could be devised for exposing the

simple, and timid, and unwary to be robbed, and jobbed, and made

tools of by a few sharpers and idle busybodies. It is very certain

that three or four individuals have often succeeded, for their own

purposes, in setting three or four hundred, or thousand, better men

than themselves at enmity with their masters. It is difficult to

imagine a case of more spirit-rousing hardship than that of the

labourer who is compelled or inveigled into a contest which he

knows, or may know, to be bad in principle, and hopeless in its

issue,—who must, against his will or his reason, give up a

subsistence which is already too scanty, in order that he may find

it still further reduced when he returns to it. In consideration of

such cases, which everybody knows to be very common, I shall state a

few facts, which may assist and strengthen the determination of some

who may be striving against the now prevalent disposition to

strike for wages. The circumstances of the time will excuse a

disproportioned enlargement on a very obvious point.

In order to bring the principle of strikes to the test, we have only

to ask whether they increase capital or check population?—one or

other of which they must do if they are to benefit the struggling

party. It is known to everybody that they do neither; but it is not

so well known that they do the direct contrary,—that they not only

waste capital, but increase the supply of labour, the very thing of

which there is already too much. They do this by driving the

capitalists to find those silent labourers who never ask subsistence

or refuse their masters’ bidding—the machines, which are the

workmen’s abhorrence. It is unreasonable as it is vain to abhor

machinery; and that its use is facilitated by strikes will be

regarded hereafter as one of the few compensating circumstances

which arise out of the miseries of such a struggle for power or for

bread. But, however great may be the ultimate good of this issue,

the issue is certainly the very reverse of that contemplated and

desired by those who turn out. Yet the time is come for them to meet

it; and they will do well to take heed to the state of the

labour-market at this period.

After long depression and many fluctuations, it appears that there

is a revival of a steady demand for labour. The condition of our

capitalists is, however, different from what it was in most former

periods of prosperity. They are now busy; but they work for very low

profits in almost every branch of manufacture or trade. Their men

must also work hard for little pay, till some of the many

circumstances which tend to raise profits shall have occurred.

Never, however, were our working-class less disposed to take the low

wages which alone the masters are able to give. Combinations to

secure a rise are everywhere spreading, and grand preparations are

thus making for securing a fall. The low profits of the masters will

not stand encroachment. There is a brisk foreign competition, which

forbids trifling with any present demand. Under these circumstances,

if our working men choose to stand idle, what remains to be done but

to use machinery to the utmost extent that ingenuity can devise on

the spur of a great occasion? The quantity of human labour already

thus superseded is very considerable; and there will be more, in

proportion to the failure of harmony between capitalists and

labourers, till not a visible chance is left for the employment of

half our working men in the way they themselves propose. Happy will

it be for them if the usual consequences of the improvement of

machinery follow in the extension of our manufactures, so that there

may still be room for such as can learn a new business! and happy

will it be for them if they have become convinced, in their time of

hardship, that to moderate the supply of labour is the only way of

securing its desired recompense!

The following case illustrates the method by which human labour is

driven out of demand: it is only one of many which have arisen out

of the tyranny of the leaders of strikes, who, not satisfied with

turning out themselves, compel their weaker, but reluctant, brethren

to be idle also. In the case in question, the turning out of the

head spinners in a cotton factory, compelling the idleness of six or

seven work-people subordinate to each spinner, has led the head

spinner’s master to find that he can do without him, and the six or

seven subordinates to rejoice in their freedom from dependence on

his movements.

Six or seven different machines are employed in the production of

cotton-yarn from raw cotton. All but the last are called

“preparation machinery,” and one person waits upon each. The

office of this preparation machinery is to form the raw cotton

into a thick and tender thread, called a “roving.” The office of

the last machine is to twist and draw out the roving into a finer

and stronger thread: this operation is called “spinning,” and the

spun thread is “yarn.” This machine is called the “hand-mule.”

Hand-mules are worked in pairs, each pair requiring the head

spinner above-mentioned to direct its operation, and two or more

children to place the rovings in the machine, and piece the

threads that break.

The head spinner, though paid in proportion to the superiority of

his work, has always been the one to turn out; and his subordinates

must go with him of necessity, however averse they might be to do

so. It was not to be borne that the discontents of the comparatively

few should derange the whole manufacture, and deprive the many of

their bread; and nothing could be more natural than for some

expedient to be sought by which the masters and the subordinates

might be made independent of the head spinners. Twenty years ago,

attempts were made to invent some apparatus which might be attached

to the mule, and discharge the spinner’s task. The apparatus first

used was either too complex or too uncertain in its operation to

answer the purpose; and, as often as it failed, the spinners clapped

their hands, believed the manufacture more in their power than ever,

and advanced in their demands accordingly. They went somewhat too

far in 1824, when they refused very high wages, and drove the

Manchester capitalists to vigorous measures of self-defence. The

requisite talent was sought and found for the object required; and,

early in 1825, a patent for the “self-acting mule” was taken out,

nothing being wanting to its efficacy but the simplification which

time and practice were sure to bring, and which would lessen its

cost so as to qualify it for common adoption. No sooner had it been

set to work, and begun to gain reputation, than a great part of the

establishment where it was in use was destroyed by fire, and the

machine was not heard of for some months. As soon as it began to be

again attended to, so great a stagnation of trade took place, that

the spirit of the spinner was subdued: the master was unwilling to

mortify him in his distress, and all mention of the self-acting mule

was dropped. This was very hard upon the patentees, who had been

originally forced into the business, and had spent, not only much

time and pains, but a great deal of money on the invention. They

rightly supposed, however, that the head spinners would give them

their turn on the first opportunity. They went on improving and

improving their invention, while awaiting another strike on the

revival of trade. This happened at the close of 1829; and then

several leading houses provided themselves with each a pair of

self-acting mules, by way of trial: but the adoption of the machine

went on languidly till the great strike of 1831 achieved its

triumph. It is now used in upwards of fifty mills, and seems likely

soon to be adopted in all others. The head spinners have not a

chance against it; for it not only saves their wages, and leaves

their subordinates at peace, but does their work better than they

could do it themselves;—an unexpected result with which the

perseverance of the inventors has been rewarded. The quantity of

yarn is greater than could before be produced in the same time and

with the same number of spindles: the yarn is of greater strength

and more uniform quality: there is a material saving of waste in the

subsequent processes, from the regularity with which the yarn is

wound on the spindle; and, from the same cause, a greater quantity

of a better fabric than before issues from the loom of the weaver.

This story preaches its own moral. Every one ought to be glad to

hear of improvements in the comforts of mankind; but all would

rather pay any other purchase-money for them than the subsistence of

a useful and often suffering class of society. It is in the power of

our working class to provide that all such improvements shall

henceforth arise otherwise than through their opposition, and for

their destruction. With them rests the choice of controlling the

labour-market on the one hand, and pauperism on the other.

--------------

If no moral reaches us from the long tragedy of pauperism which has

been enacted before the eyes of many generations, we are past

teaching. For the last three generations, especially, the state of

the indigent has been an object of primary attention to all classes

in our society. Statesmen have legislated, magistrates have

administered, the clergy have preached, tradesmen and manufacturers

have contributed, the farmers have been burdened: almost the sole

employment of women, next to the care of their own families, has

been the charge of the poor; almsgiving has been the first virtue to

which infant enthusiasm has been roused, and charity, in this sense,

has been made the test of moral sincerity and religious proficiency.

And what has all this done for society? The number of the indigent

has increased from day to day, and at a perpetually increasing rate,

till it has absorbed, in a legal charity alone, nine millions per

annum of the subsistence-fund, which is the clear right of the

independent labourer. It is no small consideration that the

habitually indigent become, as a matter of course, as their doom,

the most profligate portion of society. But this fearful

consideration is not all. We not only defraud the industrious

classes of their due, now tempting and now forcing them down into a

state of indigence, and by the same act condemning them to

hopelessness and vice, but we, at the same time, put in motion an

apparatus of moral evil among every class which has to communicate

with the indigent, which would bear down the preaching of the twelve

apostles themselves. If account could be taken of the unjust

partialities of magistrates, of the abuse of power by open vestries,

and the jobbing by select vestries; of the heart-wringing oppression

sustained by the tradesman and farmer; of the open licentiousness

and concealed fraud, the ungodly conspiracies and diabolical hatreds

nourished by our system of legal charity, and the daily repeated,

cruel injustice inflicted by our methods of public and private

charity, we might well doubt whether some fiend had not been making

sport of us under the holy semblance of charity. It may be doubted

whether the most profligate tyranny ever broke or depraved so many

hearts as the charities of our Christian nation. If our practices

are to be judged by their fruits, there are none, next to slavery,

for which we need so much pardon as for our methods of charity.

There is no use in pleading our good intentions. The fathers of the

Inquisition are ever ready with their plea of good intentions. The

parent who breaks the spirit, and thus annihilates the moral liberty

of his child, does it with the best intentions. The manœuvrer tells

twenty lies a-day with the best intentions. There is, perhaps, no

crime in whose defence good intentions may not with sincerity have

been pleaded. The question is why, with evidence that we were wrong,

daily and hourly before our eyes, we did not mend our methods.

Thence arises the moral of this dreary lesson, that virtue, whether

beneficence or any other, does not consist in formal and arbitrary

practices, but in conformity to vital principles. Without regard to

this essential truth, virtue may turn to vice before we are aware;

and as a proof of it, we have been doing the pleasure of fiends

under a persuasion that we were discharging the duty of Christians.

We have exercised self-denial in our charity: but so did Simeon

Stylobates in his piety, when he lived on the top of a pillar. We

have toiled and suffered in our charity: but so did the pilgrims who

walked with peas in their shoes to the sepulchre. Their piety and

their sufferings were a mockery of Him they worshipped; and our

charity has proved a scandal to the religion we profess. What

follows? Not that piety and charity are a mockery and a delusion;

but that Simeon did not understand the one, and we have most

assuredly mistaken the other.

One essential distinction between a comparatively rich and poor

society is in the moral right which individuals have to dispose of

their money in certain modes. Where capital abounds in proportion to

the consumers, individuals are fully justified in giving away in

whatsoever form and to whomsoever they please; as they give away

that which leaves nobody destitute. But in a society where

population abounds in proportion to capital, to give food and

clothing to the idle while the industrious are debarred from earning

it, is to take subsistence from him whose due it is, to give it to

one who has no claim. Thus to violate justice can be no true

charity. Where consumers abound in proportion to capital, it is

obvious that the way to bestow most happiness is, not to take away

one man’s share to give it to another, but to do what is possible

towards creating another share in such a way as not to cause more

want. In other words, almsgiving is the mode of charity appropriate

to one state of society, and the establishment of provident

associations, and the encouragement of emigration, and especially of

education, are the modes of charity appropriate to another state of

society. We have need enough of charity in our present state;—with

hundreds of thousands of paupers in our parishes, and of

half-starved artizans in our towns, and broken-spirited labourers in

our villages. We have need enough of charity,—of the time of such as

have leisure, and of the attention of the thoughtful, and of the

exertions of the active, and of the wealth of the opulent. All these

will be too little for the removal of the evil which our own

mistakes have caused. We have need enough of charity; and if we

would learn how to apply it, there are those among the sufferers who

can instruct us. There is in existence a letter from a poor

operative living in a district where charities of food and clothing

abound, entreating the influential parties whom he addresses to put

an end to the almsgiving which leaves no chance of a just provision

to the high-souled working man. There is in existence a petition

from a body of agricultural labourers to the House of Lords, last

year, praying for the abolition of legal charity which condemns the

labourer to starvation or degradation. These documents are signs of

the times which are not to be mistaken, and which may well strike us

silent with shame at our incessant complaints of the poor for having

lost their spirit of independence, and become a degraded race. Where

is our Christian charity, when we first wrest from them their

independence, and then taunt them with the loss? when we invite them

to encroach, and then spurn them for encroaching?

Even from this enormous evil, however, good is at this moment

arising. The rapid, the appalling increase of the mischief has

directed the general attention towards it; and the two grand

principles with which we set out afford the suggestion of remedies

which are actually in preparation. It is now many years since

certain commissioners, appointed by the French government to

investigate our pauper system, pronounced it the great political

gangrene of England, which it was equally dangerous to remove and to

let alone. The mischief has been on the increase ever since, and yet

there is hope of cure. If it were not that we had sound principles

to go upon,—if we had all this vice and misery on our hands to be

got rid of we knew not how, our condition would indeed be

deplorable. But, once having got hold of the truth that ours is a

society where labour abounds in proportion to capital, we know at

least how to look about for a remedy, and with what aim to direct

our proceedings. We must lessen the inducements to indigence,

(strange that such should exist!) by making the condition of the

pauper inferior to that of the independent labourer, and ensure its

remaining universally so by appointing a rigid, impartial, and

uniform administration of the funds of our legal charity. Every

diminution of the inducements to indigence is necessarily an

increase of the inducements to independence; both by giving the

right bias to the inclinations of the labourer, and by saving a

portion of the subsistence-fund.

In proportion to the savings effected in the subsistence-fund by a

rigid administration of the legal charity, the surplus labour of our

parishes will be absorbed; and if, by a wise scheme of emigration,

the disproportion between our capital and labour can be still

further reduced, a way will be open for the total abolition of a

legal charity,—the most demoralizing agency, perhaps, which can be

introduced into any state,—a curse beneath which no society can

prosper. We shall then be at liberty to apply our charity wholly to

that object which should now be uppermost with all the truly

benevolent,—to prevent indigence instead of providing for it, in the

full confidence that “accidental cases will be relieved by

accidental succour.” There are many who believe that an immediate

abolition of our legal charity would cause less misery than its long

continuance: but there is happily no occasion to contemplate the

alternative. There is a strong hope afforded by various instances of

partial reformation that a way remains for us out of our

difficulties,—toilsome and painful, no doubt, but practicable and

safe;—a way of so rectifying the administration of our poor-laws as

to give us the power of at length abolishing them. Honoured be the

rulers who shall set us forward on this path; and blessed be every

one who bestirs himself to remove obstructions by the substitution

of a true for a spurious charity![D]

-----

Footnote D:

If a rebuke were needed for despondency respecting the prospects

of society, it might be found in the experience of the change

which a few months have wrought in the popular convictions as to

the true direction of charity. Fifteen months ago, it required

some resolution to give so much pain to kind hearts as was

occasioned by such exposures as those contained in “Cousin

Marshall,” and yet more to protest against poor-laws for Ireland.

The publications of the Poor-Law Commissioners have since wrought

powerfully in the right direction. Conviction has flashed from

mind to mind; and now we hear from all quarters of Provident and

Friendly Societies, of Emigration, of parish struggles for the

rectification of abuses, of the regulation of workhouses, the

shutting up of soup and blanket charities, and the revision of

charitable constitutions, with a view to promote the employment of

labour rather than the giving of alms. The extent of the change of

opinion in the same time with regard to poor-laws for Ireland is

scarcely less remarkable. On no subject has mistake been more

prevalent, and never has it more rapidly given way before the

statement of principles and facts. The noblest charity, after all,

would be a provision for the regular statement, in a popular form,

of principles and facts of like importance. When shall we have a

Minister of Public Instruction who will be the angel of this new

dispensation? It is for the people to say when.

-----

Here is the statement of the evil and of one of the appropriate

remedies.

--------------

In a society composed of a natural gradation of ranks, some must be

poor; _i.e._ have nothing more than the means of present

subsistence.

Any suspension of these means of subsistence, whether through

disaster, sickness, or decrepitude, converts the poor into the

indigent.

Since indigence occasions misery, and disposes to vice, the welfare

of society requires the greatest possible reduction of the number of

the indigent.

Charity, public and private, or an arbitrary distribution of the

subsistence-fund, has hitherto failed to effect this object; the

proportion of the indigent to the rest of the population having

increased from age to age.

This is not surprising, since an arbitrary distribution of the

subsistence-fund, besides rendering consumption unproductive, and

encouraging a multiplication of consumers, does not meet the

difficulty arising from the disproportion of numbers to the means of

subsistence.

The small unproductive consumption occasioned by the relief of

sudden accidents and rare infirmities is necessary, and may be

justifiably provided for by charity, since such charity does not

tend to the increase of numbers; but, with this exception, all

arbitrary distribution of the necessaries of life is injurious to

society, whether in the form of private almsgiving, public

charitable institutions, or a legal pauper-system.

The tendency of all such modes of distribution having been found to

be to encourage improvidence with all its attendant evils,—to injure

the good while relieving the bad,—to extinguish the spirit of

independence on one side, and of charity on the other,—to encourage

peculation, tyranny, and fraud,—and to increase perpetually the evil

they are meant to remedy,—but one plea is now commonly urged in

favour of a legal provision for the indigent.

This plea is, that every individual born into a state has a right to

subsistence from the state.

This plea, in its general application, is grounded on a false

analogy between a state and its members, and a parent and his

family.

A parent has a considerable influence over the subsistence-fund of

his family, and an absolute control over the numbers to be supported

by that fund; whereas the rulers of a state, from whom a legal

provision emanates, have little influence over its subsistence-fund,

and no control whatever over the number of its members.

If the plea of right to subsistence be grounded on the faults of

national institutions, the right ought rather to be superseded by

the rectification of those institutions, than admitted at the cost

of perpetuating an institution more hurtful than all the others

combined.

--------------

What then must be done to lessen the number of the indigent now so

frightfully increasing?

The subsistence-fund must be employed productively, and capital and

labour be allowed to take their natural course; _i. e._ the pauper

system must, by some means or other, be extinguished.

The number of consumers must be proportioned to the

subsistence-fund. To this end, encouragements to the increase of

population should be withdrawn, and every sanction given to the

preventive check; _i. e._ charity must be directed to the

enlightenment of the mind instead of to the relief of bodily wants.

If not adopted speedily, all measures will be too late to prevent

the universal prevalence of poverty in this kingdom, the legal

provision for the indigent now operating the extinction of our

national resources at a perpetually increasing rate.

--------------

The objects of voluntary emigration, directed by the state, are

three-fold:—

1. To improve the condition of those who emigrate, by placing

them where they may obtain subsistence at less cost than at

home.

2. To improve the condition of those who remain, by increasing

the ratio of capital to population.

3. To improve the condition of the colonized region.

To fulfil the first of these objects, the colony must be so located

as to insure health and abundance to its members; and it must be so

organized as to secure the due co-operation of labour and capital.

To fulfil the second object, the removal of each individual must be

less costly than his maintenance at home would be; and the selection

must be made with a view to lessening the amount of human

productiveness at home.

To fulfil the third object, the colonists must be selected with a

view to their productiveness, both as regards capital and

population; which includes a moral fitness to compose an orderly

society.

It follows from all these considerations that a new settlement

should be composed of young, healthy, and moral persons; that all

should not be labourers, nor all capitalists; and that there should

be a sufficient concentration of their numbers on the new lands to

ensure a facility of exchanges.

--------------

All other proposed remedies must be subjected to, as this must be

regulated by, the test, whether they assist in proportioning labour

and capital. The Home Colonization system here fails, on the double

ground that it ensures a smaller return to capital and labour than

could be had abroad, and serves as a direct premium on population.

Home colonies may afford a temporary relief to a redundant

population, and also increase the productiveness of the lands which

they appropriate; but this is done by alienating capital from its

natural channels; and with the certainty of ultimately injuring

society by increasing the redundancy of population over capital.

Home colonization then, though less injurious than the unproductive

distribution of the charity-fund, is inferior to foreign

colonization, inasmuch as the one yields temporary benefit to a few

at the expense of ultimate injury to many; and the other produces

permanent benefit to all.

--------------

All provisions for rewarding forethought and economy, and

especially all for the diffusion of sound moral and political

knowledge, approve themselves by this test. All contrivance and

care in the production and economy of capital approve themselves

also; but Emigration is conspicuous in its merits, since it not

only immediately reaches the seat of the evil in the mother

country, but affords the greatest of blessings to the colonized

regions. If regulated by a due regard to the infallible test, it

is scarcely possible to conceive of an arrangement more apt to all

the purposes of society. Where it has failed, the reason of

failure has commonly been that one link in the chain of operating

causes has been wanting. Land and labourers cannot mutually

prosper without the capital which has too often been deficient. We

have not yet made the experiment of sending out small societies

completely organized, and amply provided to settle down at once in

a state of sufficient civilization to spare the mother-country all

further anxiety about the expedition. It can be no objection to

this that it abstracts capital and the most useful species of

labour from the mother-country: since the capital so sent out will

yield a more rapid and ample increase to us in a new market for

commerce than it could have done at home; and the labour is that

which we least want at home,—however good its quality may be,—and

that which we most want in our possessions on the other side the

world. Such an organized society, however, would be able to bear a

much larger proportion of children than a similar society could

take charge of at home,—the labour of children being of as much

more value than their maintenance abroad, as it is less at home.

If for every old person naturally belonging to such a company,

left behind, two children were taken out, this country would be

immediately compensated for the abstraction of prime labour, and a

provision would be made for the future contraction of the

population. All details, however, from the greatest to the least,

will be arranged with infinitely less trouble than our parochial

mismanagements have cost us when we have once, as a nation,

surveyed the dreary haunts of our pauperized classes, and then

taken a flight in spirit to the fair regions abroad which invite

their labour with a sure promise of rich recompense. The time must

come when it will be a matter of wonder how we could so long be

oppressed with a redundancy of labour at home, while our foreign

lands were dreary only for want of labour, while an open sea lay

between, while we had shipping to spare to traverse it, and while

we were spending nine millions a year in the fruitless support of

our paupers, and as a premium on the production of yet more and

more labour. The best plea for us in that day will be that we did

not understand our own case. By the time we have spent nine

millions, or the half of nine millions, in relieving our labour

market, we may have discovered how inferior is that superstitious,

spurious charity which doles out bread at its own door to an

unlawful petitioner because to give bread was once charity, and

that enlightened, genuine benevolence which causes plenty to

spring in the far corners of the world, nourishing at home the

ancient household virtues which have been well nigh starved among

us, but which are not dead.

--------------

What decision does our test give out in regard to Ireland? That, as

a redundancy of population is her universally acknowledged curse, it

is unreasonable to expect relief from the introduction of a legal

charity,—the most efficacious of all premiums on population. The

conclusion is so obvious, that it can be got rid of only by proving

either that a redundant population is not the great grievance of

Ireland, or that there may be a legal charity which does not act as

a premium on population. Where are the materials for either the one

proof or the other?

Whatever affects the security of property, or intercepts the due

reward of labour, impairs the subsistence-fund by discouraging

industry and forethought.

Partnership tenantcies affect the security of property by rendering

one tenant answerable for the obligations of all his partners, while

he has no control over the management of their portions.

A gradation of landlords on one estate has the same effect, by

rendering one tenant liable to the claims of more than one landlord.

The levying of fines on a whole district for an illegal practice

going on in one part of it has the same effect, by rendering the

honest man liable for the malpractices of the knave.

The imposition of a church establishment on those who already

support another church, intercepts the due reward of labour, by

taking from the labourer a portion of his earnings for an object

from which he derives no benefit.

The practice of letting land to the highest bidder, without regard

to former service, or to the merits of the applicants, intercepts

the due reward of the labourer, by decreeing his gains to expire

with his lease.

All these practices having prevailed in IRELAND, her

subsistence-fund is proportionably impaired, though the reduction is

somewhat more than compensated by the natural growth of capital.

While capital has been growing much more slowly than it ought,

population has been increasing much more rapidly than the

circumstances of the country have warranted; the consequences of

which are, extensive and appalling indigence, and a wide spread of

the moral evils which attend it.

An immediate palliation of this indigence would be the result of

introducing a legal pauper-system into Ireland; but it would be at

the expense of an incalculable permanent increase of the evil.

To levy a poor-rate on the country at large would be impolitic,

since it would only increase the primary grievance of an

insufficiency of capital, by causing a further unproductive

consumption of it.

To throw the burthen of a pauper-system on absentees would be

especially unjust, since they bear precisely the same relation to

the wealth of their country as its resident capitalists.

In the case of Ireland, as in all analogous cases, permanent relief

can be effected only by adjusting the proportions of capital and

population; and this must be attempted by means suited to her

peculiar circumstances.

The growth of capital should be aided by improvements in

agricultural and domestic economy, and by the removal of political

grievances; from which would follow a union in place of an

opposition of interests.

Population should be reduced within due limits,

In the present emergency, by well-conducted schemes of emigration;

and

Permanently, by educating the people till they shall have become

qualified for the guardianship of their own interests.

A sameness in the natural laws of distribution exactly reverses the

order of possession in new countries, i. e., in those where capital

abounds in proportion to population. There the landowner (if any one

finds it worth his while to be a landowner without being either a

capitalist or a labourer at the same time) gains no real rent till

the best land is all under cultivation, and then very little till a

third degree is resorted to. The capitalist, meanwhile, makes less

than the labourer; or would gain less if he were not, like the

landowner, a labourer also. Where labour is so dear, all are

labourers; and the labourer, by a very natural process, soon becomes

a capitalist and a landowner; and then he may chance to learn what a

strange thing it seems to a man from the mother-country to let land

of a fine quality for no better rent than a small share of the

produce; and how vexatious it is, after having reaped splendid

returns to capital, to have to pay away, in the purchase of labour,

all but little more than the ordinary profits of stock.

The want of a due consideration of the difference in relative

condition of labourers at home and labourers in new countries has

led to some serious errors[E] in the formation and execution of some

of our plans of colonization. Such a scheme as that of penal

colonization could never have been adopted if the case of the

working class in both countries had been understood. Besides the

many other objections which might be and have been forcibly urged,

there must remain the insurmountable one that labour is better

rewarded in a new colony than at home. It does not appear that any

arbitrary severity, short of the infliction of such life-long misery

as no crime can deserve, can counteract the natural law by which the

labourer is more prosperous in our penal colonies than in England.

They are places of privilege, and the carrying him there is putting

him in a condition of privilege, sooner or later, however severely

we may punish him for any terminable period. This is so notoriously

the case, that it has become matter of very serious consideration

how the lot of the convict can be rendered harder, and be made known

at home to be so; and arrangements have been made, within a short

period, by which the disproportion in the lot of the innocent and

the guilty is considerably lessened. Still, however far the convict

may be placed below the virtuous emigrant in the scale of comfort,

no power can, in the present state of our labour-market, prevent his

being much better off than the independent labourer at home. The

power of rulers may ordain chains, whipping, and other penalties to

the convict; but it cannot prevent his having, during a pressing

demand for his labour, that abundance of the necessaries of life

which the virtuous labourer cannot obtain at home. Bob Castle[F]

would not now, perhaps, be able to purchase an estate on which his

honest brother Frank was a labourer; but Bob, however he might have

been punished for seven or fourteen years, could not but have a

fairer prospect before him at the end of that time than honest Frank

would have had in England. This necessity forms, of itself, a

conclusive argument against penal colonization as a secondary

punishment. That mode of punishment can never command respect or

success which wanders so far from the principle of retribution as to

inflict studied miseries as a set-off against advantages which

cannot be excluded.

-----

Footnote E:

It is incumbent on me to advert to the ill-success of one method

of supplying labour to the Australian colonies, which I have

represented in much too favourable a light in my tale of “Homes

Abroad.” I find that, though I have pointed out (pp. 54, 55) the

leading objections to the plan of indenturing servants to colonial

settlers, I have represented the issue of such an experiment as

more prosperous than it has been proved in fact. The true state of

the case will be learned from the following extract from “Papers

relating to the Crown Lands and Emigration to New South Wales,”

printed by order of the House of Commons, October, 1831.

"The Emigrant, in the cases to which we allude, has bound himself,

previously to his departure from this country, to serve his

employer for a time at wages which, though higher than those which

he could have obtained at home, were much below the ordinary rate

in the colony. No attempt has been made to render the advantage

obtained by the employer in this manner an equivalent for the

expense he has incurred in carrying out the Emigrants; and it can

scarcely be doubted that in many instances the bargain, if

strictly adhered to, would have been more than reasonably

profitable to the employer. Indeed it has been the principal fault

of these arrangements that the engagement of the Emigrant has not

been on either side regarded as a mere undertaking to repay the

expense incurred in his conveyance; and hence he has often been

led to look upon the transaction as a disadvantageous hiring of

himself, into which he had been misled by his ignorance of the

circumstances of the place to which he was going. This has been

the frequent cause of discontent on the part of indentured

servants; and their masters, unable to derive any advantage from

unwilling labourers, have found it more for their interest to

discharge these servants than to insist on the right conveyed by

their bond. It is obvious that no increased severity in the legal

enactments for the protection of contracts could prevent those

which we have described from being thus dissolved; for they have

been so, not from any insufficiency in the obligations by which

the Emigrants have been bound, but from the impossibility of

rendering such obligations worth preserving, where one of the

parties strongly desires them to be cancelled."—pp. 21, 22.

These objections apply only to cases of _binding_ for more than

the repayment of the expenses of removal to the colony. Next to

the education of the people at home, there is no way in which

charity can now operate so beneficially as in making loans, under

security of repayment, to enable working men, and yet more working

_women_, to transport themselves to our Australian colonies; and

by diffusing, as widely as possible, _correct_ information

respecting the condition and prospects of emigrants to our North

American colonies. This correct information, which is to the last

degree interesting, may be obtained from the Papers above referred

to, and the “Reports of the Emigration Commissioners, for 1832;

printed by order of the House of Commons.” Every active

philanthropist ought to possess himself of the contents of these

papers. The Report, dated 1832, contains the following.

“Before we close this account of our proceedings regarding New

South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, we must observe that the value

of that which has been accomplished cannot be justly estimated by

a mere reference to the number already gone out. The general scope

and tendency of our measures must be taken into account, as well

as the importance, in an endeavour to direct emigration to a

quarter comparatively new, of having succeeded in making a

_commencement_. For, after the impulse has once been given towards

countries really adapted to emigration, the letters of the

settlers themselves, more perhaps than the most elaborate

statements from authority, serve to maintain and propagate the

disposition to resort to the same quarter. Although, therefore,

the measures that have been adopted this year may be limited in

their immediate influence, and it may be also impossible to

predict with certainty their ulterior results, yet, at least, they

are of such a nature that, if successful, they may serve as the

foundation of a system sufficient for many years to prevent the

progress of the Australian colonies from being retarded by the

want of an industrious population adequate to the development of

their resources.” (p. 6.) And the mother-country, we may add, from

being impeded, by an over-crowded population at home, in her

efforts to exalt the social and moral condition of her mighty

family.

Footnote F:

See Homes Abroad.

-----

The objects of penal colonization are—

1. The security of society by the removal of the offender.

2. The security of society by the effect of his example.

3. The reformation of the offender.

There has hitherto been an entire failure of all these objects: and

no wonder; since,—

1. The offender is only transferred from one portion of society

to another; and besides, frequently returns to his old haunts.

2. His punishment, as far as it is punishment, takes place at

too great a distance to be conspicuous as a warning; and in as

far as his lot does not involve punishment, the effect of his

example is precisely the reverse of what is desired.

3. Our convict arrangements tend to the further corruption of

the offender, by letting him experience a great improvement in

his condition as a direct consequence of his crimes.

The junction of penal with voluntary emigration tends equally to

disappoint the purposes of the one, and to extinguish the benefits

of the other; since convict labourers find themselves in a state of

privilege, in a region where their labour procures them large

rewards; and new settlers find their community deeply injured by the

vice and disease consequent on the introduction of a convict

population.

Before closing this part, it may be well to observe that much vain

reluctance to acknowledge the two grand principles which primarily

regulate the distribution of wealth, arises from too small an

allowance having been asked for subordinate influences, which may

justify a much greater degree of hopefulness respecting the

condition of an advanced country than some economists have ventured

to indulge. It is no wonder that the kind-hearted turn away, and

refuse to listen to a doctrine which is thought to forbid much hope

that the whole of any society can be comfortably provided with the

necessaries of life. It is no wonder that the timid cease from

trying to lop off evils, if they must believe that every head of the

social hydra will grow again,—that for every redundancy drawn off

there will be a speedy over-filling. All experience of humanity

contradicts such forebodings: and, though it would assuredly be our

duty to make our own generation happier than the last, even under

the certainty that the next must fall back again, it is much more

animating to believe, as we are justified in doing, that every

advance is a pledge of a further advance; that every taste of

comfort, generated to the poor man by his own exertions, stimulates

the appetite for more. It has ever been found that, when men have

learned to prefer wheaten bread to potatoes, it is more likely that

their children should be taught to seek butchers’ meat than allowed

to fall back to potatoes. The father who has worked his way up into

a glazed and tiled cottage, brings up his children to fear the mud

hovel in which they were born. If we do but apply ourselves to

nourish the taste for comfort in the poor,—to take for granted the

most, instead of the least, that they ought to require, there is

little fear but that, whenever circumstances allow, they will fall

into our way of thinking, and prefer a home of comfort, earned by

forethought and self-denial, to herding together in a state of

reckless pauperism. With every increase of resources, let a vigorous

exertion be made to rouse the complacency and exalt the tastes of

the labouring class, and it will assuredly be found, in the interval

before a new access of labour can be brought into the market, that

the condition of the class has improved as a matter of theory, as

well as practice, and that it must go hard with them but they will

keep it up.

All experience warrants this statement. There can be no question

that the preventive check has largely superseded the positive in all

advancing societies. There can be no doubt of the increased

providence of the middling classes, and the enlargement of the

domestic requirements of the poor, even though wars, famine, and

pestilence have nearly ceased to make the awful vacancies in which

the wants and desires of the survivors could expand. Though in some

unhappy districts where the visitations of want have extinguished

the moral check, multitudes still herd together, more like brutes

than human beings, it is certain that there is a larger demand among

the working classes of England for better food, clothing,

habitations, and furniture, than their fathers thought of requiring.

If this has taken place notwithstanding all the bad policy, public

and private, with which we have weakened the spirit and the power of

independence, there is ample reason for confidence in an accelerated

progress in proportion as public and private influence shall work in

an opposite direction. Since every one can, many will assist in this

noble work; assured that not a single effort can be lost, and that

its successful result will extend far beyond the present generation.

Few are now found to advocate that species of prospective

benevolence which acts by long-reaching pecuniary bequests; but it

does not follow that benevolence may not be prospective. Let it

extend its view to the remotest ages within ken of the human

imagination. Let it do this by promoting the welfare of the parents

of future generations;—a wide field enough, if we lived but for

charity.

-----------------------

PART III.

The total wealth of society being distributed among three classes,

according to the principles above announced, the next process is the

exchange of commodities by individuals for purposes of individual

enjoyment.

The complication of this process arises chiefly from the diversity

of production which takes place on the earth, occasioning not only a

wide difference in the amount of labour required to produce the same

results in different regions, but a perpetual variegation and

augmentation of commodities, which affect the demand, and render

uncertain the transactions of trade.

This complication, however, involves no disastrous perplexity,

unless meddled with by powers which bear no relation to it. All

commodities will declare their own value, and obtain equivalents, to

the ultimate satisfaction of the exchanging parties, if they are

left to themselves; but when any power, which cannot regulate human

wants and wishes, interferes to prescribe what provision shall be

made for those wants and wishes, there is not only a certainty that

the relative values of commodities will be temporarily deranged, to

the disadvantage of one of the exchanging parties, but an

uncertainty when the natural relation of values will be restored,

and whether disorder will not first spread into every other

department of exchange. Since human labour is the universal

commodity which is brought to market, to be given and taken under

all forms, (since capital is only hoarded labour,) there is no

safety in ticketing any one commodity as containing more labour than

it naturally includes, and thus destroying its balance with the

rest, to the injury of its seller’s credit, and its buyer’s

interest. This is what is done by every government which presumes to

interfere with the barter of individuals, or authorizes such

interference. The duty of government is precisely the reverse;—to

secure the freedom of exchange as carefully as the freedom of

labour, in the full assurance that it cannot determine relative

values till it can determine the amount of labour and the extent of

human wants in every region of the earth. This it may do when it has

mastered the chemical and mechanical constitution of the globe, when

it may not only gauge the rain in every region, but appoint the

proportion of its fall.

There are two kinds of Value: value in use, and value in exchange.

Articles of the greatest value in use may have none in exchange: as

they may be enjoyed without labour; and it is labour which confers

exchangeable value.

This is not the less true for capital as well as labour being

employed in production; for capital is hoarded labour.

When equal quantities of any two articles require an equal amount of

labour to produce them, they exchange exactly against one another.

If one requires more labour than the other, a smaller quantity of

the one exchanges against a larger quantity of the other.

If it were otherwise, no one would bestow a larger quantity of

labour for a less return; and the article requiring the most labour

would cease to be produced.

Exchangeable value, therefore, naturally depends on cost of

production.

Naturally, but not universally; for there are influences which cause

temporary variations in exchangeable value.

These are, whatever circumstances affect demand and supply. But

these can act only temporarily; because the demand of any procurable

article creates supply; and the factitious value conferred by

scarcity soon has an end.

When this end has arrived, cost of production again determines

exchangeable value.

Its doing so may, therefore, stand as a general rule.

Though labour, immediate and hoarded, is the _regulator_, it is not

the _measure_ of exchangeable value; for the sufficient reason, that

labour itself is perpetually varying in quality and quantity, from

there being no fixed proportion between immediate and hoarded

labour.

Since labour, the primary regulator, cannot serve as a measure of

exchangeable value, none of the products of labour can serve as such

a measure.

There is, therefore, no measure of exchangeable value.

Such a measure is not needed; as a due regulation of the supply of

labour, and the allowance of free scope to the principle of

competition ensure sufficient stability of exchangeable value for

all practical purposes.

In these requisites are included security of property, and freedom

of exchange, to which political tranquillity and legislative

impartiality are essential.

Price is the exponent of exchangeable value.

Natural or necessary price,—regulated by cost of production,—

includes the wages of the labourer, and the profits of the

capitalist.

Market price varies from natural price with variations of demand and

supply, and in proportion to the oppressiveness of public burdens

and commercial restrictions.

The more nearly and permanently market prices approach natural

prices, the more prosperous is the state of commerce; and the two

most essential requisites to this prosperity are social tranquillity

and legislative impartiality.

The ancient error, that some mysterious quality inherent in gold and

silver money constituted it wealth, almost to the exclusion of every

other commodity, is now so universally dismissed by all who know

anything of our science, that there is no occasion to controvert it

further than by presenting the appropriate Summary of Principles;

and the kindred modern error, that an enlargement of its quantity

can do more than give a temporary, and probably hurtful, stimulus to

industry, requires now no more than a similar exposure. The sense of

the country has lately been taken on this question; and the result

proves that there is prevalent a sufficient knowledge of the

philosophy and fact of the case to encourage a hope that no such

hazardous sport with the circulating medium as the country has

previously suffered from will be again attempted. The fate of the

Berkeley[G] family, in consequence of actions on the currency, is

only one instance from one class. A long series of sad stories might

be told of sufferers of every rank, whose partial prosperity,

enjoyed at the expense of one another’s ruin, was soon swallowed up

in the destruction which universally attends a shock to public

credit. The injured might be found dispersed through every dwelling

in the land; and, however loudly the richer might complain of the

magnitude of their losses, the most cruelly injured were those who

had the least opportunity of accounting for their gains and their

losses, and therefore the least power of meeting the pressure of

circumstances by prudence and forethought.

-----

Footnote G:

Berkeley the Banker.

-----